Dana Oldfather begins each morning with philosophy and ends it with paint still on her hands. The Cleveland-based artist has spent two decades building a visual language that moves fluidly between abstraction and figuration — one driven not by calculation, but by instinct, mystery and the emotional truths she has gathered along the way. We sat down with Dana to talk about balance, contradiction and what it means to make work that holds both terror and beauty at once.
Dana Oldfather in her studio.Your work moves between abstraction and figuration — how do you decide when a piece calls for one over the other?
I have built up a language of forms over two decades of painting and drawing. The works flow into and inform each other. I revisit older drawings and bring back elements of the language I may have forgotten. The move between abstraction and figuration within each work is subconscious — I respond instinctually to what the work needs. I haven’t figured out exactly what drives this impulse, and I welcome the mystery into its development.
Can you tell us more about the feeling of being “unmoored and off-balance” that comes through in your recent work, and how that translates visually?
The feeling of a painting is more important to me than the reality of the scene. I use formal style and dynamic color to turn up the heat on feelings of weightlessness, awe and otherworldliness. Shifting horizon lines toward the top of the picture plane helps produce these feelings. My compositions are beginning to center along the mid-line of the picture — a reflection of my search for balance.
How has becoming a mother shaped the way you think about color, conflict and emotional contradiction in your paintings?
Motherhood was profoundly challenging for me in the beginning. My husband Randall was — and continues to be — enormously supportive, and still I was overwhelmed. Depression and desperation, combined with the immense love I felt for my family during those infant and toddler years, sharpened each other and made me who I am today. This bittersweet truth — that the world can be simultaneously full of terror and beauty, the dilemma of simply being — is the seed at the center of my work.
Can you share the story behind your edition with us, Untitled — what was going on for you when you made it?
I was seven months pregnant in 2013 when this print was made. At the time I was exploring ideas of contradiction and how to represent them visually: black and white versus color, organic hand-drawn line versus geometric field shapes, opaque versus translucent layers. I designed the print digitally at home in Cleveland, then traveled to Brooklyn where Luther at the print shop worked hard to figure out how to produce it in screenprint. It was a beautiful late summer — a wonderful week in Brooklyn.
What does a typical day in the studio look like for you right now?
I get up at 6 or 6:30am and read philosophy for about an hour with my coffee before driving my son Arlo to camp or school. Once home, I meditate for fifteen minutes in my yellow chair in the studio, then put on music or a podcast and start mixing color. I paint until lunchtime, take an hour break to eat, then return to work before picking Arlo up. I get another hour or two once we’re home and before dinner. Sometimes I work while cooking — my studio is just off the hallway from the kitchen. After dinner is family time: some television or an audiobook, and bed by 9 or 9:30pm. Wash, rinse, repeat.
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